It’s almost Chinese New Year! Pop up markets selling all kinds of New Year’s decorations are opening everywhere. All the stands sell slightly different variations of things, but there are a lot of red lanterns that are believed to drive off bad luck. There are also all kinds of paper cuttings and couplets that you can tape to your door that usually have good wishes or statements about what people want in the new year. It was confusing to me about whether this year was the year of the sheep, ram or goat, but apparently the Chinese word translates to all of them. One friend explained that people prefer to buy little stuffed sheep mascots because they’re more lovely and fluffy! I found a lot of cool stuff that I would have liked to buy but unfortunately I was still traveling for another few weeks and had no room in my backpack.
